


Night Light

by maiNuoire



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, M/M, Mild Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9237779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maiNuoire/pseuds/maiNuoire
Summary: After they lost their family, Laura gets Derek a gift to help him get through the nights and the nightmares. Years later, Derek gives it to Stiles for the same reason.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think of this, it's a little melancholy, but hopeful at the end, and it has Derek being a loving and observant friend, and Stiles accepting some much needed comfort.

It was a gift from Laura. A mostly-joke gift, but a little bit serious. She got it after they moved to New York, because you can’t always see a full moon in the city. Derek is still drowning in guilt and she wanted to offer some small comfort and she saw the full moon night light and thought, “This might help him.” So she bought it with only a little bit of sardonic intent.

Derek pretended to hate it when he came home and found it mounted on his wall, but when he went to bed that night he turned it on and found it actually made him feel a little better.

It was even better when later in the night Laura came in to lie down with him and stare at the softly glowing false moonlight. Over the next few years, he doesn’t use it every night, and Laura doesn’t come in that often, but it’s enough that sometimes he can sleep without nightmares. Laura, too.

After he comes back to BH and finds Laura dead, the nightlight is one of the only things that comes back with him. He puts it on every night and tries to remember what the comfort it gave him feels like. It takes a long time for it to work again, though by then he also has a sort of pack, and a complicated relationship with a mouthy, sarcastic, beautiful man who though he is a few years younger, is so much more clever, and full of life; who is someone he can’t stop  _ wanting. _

After all the trauma and drama of life in Beacon Hills, after the Nogitsune and the aftermath, Stiles is...quieter. He’s not the same loud, bright force of nature he was. He loses weight, he talks less, his amber eyes are framed by dark smudges and rimmed in red more often than not. He smells of guilt and fear and doubt. Everything about him screams exhaustion. And no one else seems to notice.

Derek doesn’t know how to talk to him about it, despite whatever growing he’s done, he still hasn’t quite gotten to the point that he can find the right words, not for something this important at least. He tries to reach out in subtle ways, but whether it’s the lack of sleep dulling his awareness, or his guilt convincing him that he doesn’t deserve to reach out for the comfort, it doesn’t seem to work.

One night, Derek finds himself in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to do anything but think about Stiles. About how to help him, and about what it would be like if he were to let Derek hold him and offer the comfort he’s so desperate to give. About whether he’ll still smell like spring and spice underneath the pain. He looks out the window and sees the waxing moon glowing brightly, casting its soothing light over the world outside and filling Derek’s bedroom with soft illumination where it filters through his curtains.

And then, Derek knows what he can give to Stiles.

So he takes the nightlight out of his drawer (or perhaps it is on his wall, not forgotten, but not often used), and gets in his car, and drives to Stiles’. He has a suspicion that he isn’t asleep.

When he arrives, he sees that Stiles is actually in bed, curled up tightly and facing away from the window. So Derek eases the window open quietly, enters the room and as noiselessly as possible he hangs the moon nightlight on the wall where Stiles will see it when he wakes up. He pauses for just a minute to watch Stiles, the steady movement of his breathing.

He sighs, it’s laced with so many conflicting feelings: regret, guilt, longing. Hope. He makes his way quietly back to the window and is about to slide it open again when Stiles’ sleep rough voice calls out “Any particular reason you’re sneaking into my room at stupid o’clock in the morning, Der?” Despite the low volume, it breaks the silence in the room like a thunderclap, and the way he sounds so much like Stiles pre-possession makes Derek’s heart ache.

Derek clears his throat before he tries to speak, but he still sounds strange when he says “I was uh, just dropping something off for you,”

Stiles rolls over in his bed to look at Derek, looking toward the nightlight where it sits on his wall when Derek gestures at it. “You. You brought me the moon?” Stiles sounds small and disbelieving in a way he never has, and Derek feels his heart sink into his stomach. He wants so much to take the few steps necessary to close the distance between them and hold Stiles’ face in his hands and offer him some sort of reassurance. 

He isn’t sure he’d be welcome, so he pushes his feet into the floor instead and says “Laura got it for me after--When we moved away from here. It helped me sleep, sometimes.” Stiles is just looking at him, listening with a look of rapt awe on his face, so he continues. “Some nights Laura would come and sleep in my room with me, we’d both look at that moon until we fell asleep. It kept the nightmares away. Some nights, anyways.”

Stiles still hasn’t said anything, so Derek takes a deep breath and nods, preparing to leave. “Right, so. If you want to keep it, you can. I just thought that maybe it could do for you what it did for me.”

Before he turns around, Stiles says a quiet “Thank you,” and it’s so full of gratitude that it hits Derek with an almost physical force. He nods and heads toward the window, a  _ “Good night, Stiles _ ” on the tip of his tongue, but before he can say it, before he can get his fingers wrapped all the way around the window sill, Stiles calls out again, still a quiet storm breaking through the still air in the room. “Derek?”

“Yeah?” Derek tries to make the word sound like “ _ anything you need from me”  _ and he thinks it works, because the next thing Stiles says sounds like a plea and a sigh of relief, even if he sounds uncertain about the answer.

“Can you maybe stay? With me?”

Derek fixes the curtain and turns back toward Stiles, a soft smile lifting the very corners of his mouth. This time, he says out loud “Anything you need,” as he makes his way toward the bed as Stiles scoots over to make room, lifting the edge of the covers. Derek toes off his shoes and sheds his coat before climbing into the bed carefully, intending to keep some distance between them. 

Stiles has other ideas apparently, because as soon as Derek is settled, Stiles moves next to him, asking “Is this okay?” as he lifts his arm to hover over Derek’s chest, waiting to set it down until Derek moves closer to him and wraps his other arm around Stiles’ shoulders.

When Stiles relaxes against him, there’s a soft sigh that Derek isn’t entirely certain didn’t come from him. He’s halfway asleep moments later when Stiles says again “You brought me the moon.”

A few seconds later, his head gets just a little heavier where it rests on Derek’s shoulder, and he’s asleep. Derek smiles into the top of his head and holds him a little tighter, whispering “Good night, Stiles” as he lets himself drift to sleep, content in the knowledge that under the guilt and fear, Stiles still smells like springtime and spice as the glow from the moon nightlight on the wall bathes the room in soft light.

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/poetry-protest-pornography)  
> 


End file.
